Priscilla (2023)

My moviegoing habits have changed since the pandemic and are still out of focus. I finally went back into theaters earlier this year. My first preference is this newfangled 10 a.m. Tuesday matinee at the multiplexes, although the choices are not as good as at the local art house. I’ve seen a bunch of morning movies with only one or two others in attendance or even by myself. So I was a little set back to find my 11 a.m. matinee of Sofia Coppola’s latest just simply packed. Yes, it was the opening week, but come on. They all looked like retired biker outlaws. I guess that figures, given it’s an Elvis Presley movie, based on Priscilla Presley’s outrageously entertaining 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me. These days the seating in my multiplexes is all assigned and I was thoroughly nonplussed to find one such outlaw and his chick taking seats right next to me and carrying on for the duration as if they were sitting in their living room. They would remember things like that RCA was Elvis’s major label after Sun. Save it for later! I was further nonplussed to recall that I still hadn’t seen Baz Luhrmann’s much-celebrated Elvis from a year or two ago. It seemed to me in this bad moment that I really should have looked at it before seeing Priscilla. But you can’t do everything and I made what I could of the picture at hand: Cailee Spaeny is effective playing the title role low-key, Jacob Elordi did not impress much as an Elvis impersonator, and in general it is faithful to the book but the book is better, for example in bringing out the bizarre sexual tensions of their early relationship. I chalk up the feeling of restrained veracity to Priscilla Presley’s role on the picture as an executive producer. Priscilla is worth seeing for Elvis and/or Sofia Coppola completists. It’s all a bit wooden, but, as always, Coppola’s soundtrack choices are intriguing and often startlingly appropriate, including the Ramones’ cover of “Baby, I Love You” under the titles, “Crimson and Clover” during the late ‘50s period, Brenda Lee’s “Sweet Nothin’s,” and a bunch of hip-hop that worked when you might think it wouldn’t. No word on that from the couple sitting next to me.

I couldn’t shake my self-accusatory mood of being a lazy underachiever, so I hurried home after the credits started to roll and took a look at Elvis online. Yes, my heart sank when I saw it was almost three hours long, but it turned out to be entertaining and a lot more lively than Priscilla. Of course, Priscilla has the advantage of being far closer to the truth. I have already filed director Baz Luhrmann under unrepentant fantasist, for better or worse—The Great Gatsby no, Moulin Rouge maybe, and in general he’s one of those “from the mind of” guys. Austin Butler as Elvis has been oversold, I think, but he is good and has a few moments where he is almost transcendent. Tom Hanks in prosthetics, I believe (or is it CGI?), plays Colonel Tom Parker as a simpering manipulative huckster—he’s not bad, but the script is. Elvis is more telling the story of Parker, not Elvis. And it’s basically just riffing on the legend and known facts: Elvis, under Parker’s management, blazed onto the scene in 1956 and got in trouble for his lewd stage moves. He was drafted and served his time. He spent much of the ‘60s making bad movies. He had a big comeback TV special in 1968 and then became a star in amber in Las Vegas. He took a lot of pharmaceuticals and eventually died from them. It's all dutifully here, but the motivations offered are insane, or at least depart from what I thought I knew. He’s explicitly forced into the Army to get him off the stage, for example. He is defiant toward Colonel Parker, notably in the TV special, whereas I’ve always heard he was absolutely deferential to Parker (he certainly is in Priscilla). I take it that these things “made narrative sense” to Luhrmann and his cowriters Sam Bromell and Craig Pearce because they aren’t the way I understand Elvis’s career or even his legend exactly. On the other hand, looking up the song “Trouble,” I see that it was indeed written in 1958 by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. But I’m pretty sure Elvis never used it to stir up a riot at a show in the South circa 1957 where he was closely watched by authorities. “Trouble” is more famous for being Elvis’s opening number on the TV special. But OK, fine, never mind. Elvis can be vastly entertaining even as it mangles my sense of history (which might be wrong?). Priscilla looks and feels closer to the truth, but it’s not as exciting. Still, it’s a great double feature, and I swear too that I saw them in the right order.

Dead Elvis (1991)

I circled back to this Greil Marcus cogitation because Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles reminded me of it. On the surface, both are similarly focused on key figures who came to an ending—Elvis died and the Beatles broke up—which amounted to little more than blips in their continuing careers. They only got bigger. Well, maybe—it's true enough on a certain level. Sheffield's book is much more recent, but more than 25 years later now it's easier to question the premise of Dead Elvis. Is Elvis finally dead now? Well, maybe—it's true enough on a certain level. In retrospect, after the rush to the 10-year anniversary of his death in 1987, Elvis mania was starting to peter out in about 1991. I'm someone who is always late to everything and thus, as evidence, I offer that I promoted my first book in 1993 by hiring two (2) Elvis Presley impersonators to accompany me to a book signing as bodyguards. I admit it was under influence of Dead Elvis. And Marcus still remains a lurking factor in the way I approach and think about cultural issues. His best work is usually about Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, or the Sex Pistols, whatever else he may formally be writing about (which is often simply them, as here). In a way, it feels like he somehow asserts critical propriety over certain artists—Lana Del Rey is shaping up to be his 21st-century project. Much of the heat I encountered my first time through Dead Elvis, when it was new, has cooled considerably. It seems more a product of its time, the late '80s, which may be approximately Peak Elvis. The book's visual exhibits all seem to come from 1988. As always Marcus's ideas are fun to grasp and toss around and he's always a good writer. If some of his insights are closer to weird, others are dead-on. This time I especially appreciated the attempt to take down Albert Goldman's biography. It was already a bestseller, but Marcus does a lot of heavy lifting for why Goldman's exercise is wrong in ways that are harmful to all of us, not just Elvis. Mostly Dead Elvis is a book about other books—on the music of Elvis, Marcus is still best in Mystery Train. But Dead Elvis can be a lot of fun too. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it feels a little more authoritative and thoughtful on Elvis than Dreaming the Beatles does on the Beatles. But they are two rather different projects after all.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.

True Romance (1993)

USA / France, 120 minutes
Director: Tony Scott
Writers: Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary
Photography: Jeffrey L. Kimball
Music: Hans Zimmer
Editors: Michael Tronick, Christian Wagner
Cast: Patricia Arquette, Christian Slater, Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, James Gandolfini, Bronson Pinchot, Saul Rubinek, Val Kilmer, Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Conchata Ferrell, Michael Rapaport, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore

As a matter of pure coincidence, I happened to run across a listicle on the Internet this morning when I sat down to write, The 15 Best Movies About Lovers on the Run. It not only put True Romance at the tippy-toppest of the heap but also included most of the other titles I'd thought to jot down while looking at it again recently: Badlands, Bonnie and Clyde, Something Wild, Wild at Heart. The only one from my notes not on that writer's list was After Hours, which after all is not so much lovers on the run as man in over his head. A man in over his head is often a natural feature of lovers-on-the-run movies, including True Romance. A man in over his head, but in this case a man rising to the occasion, and in more than easy comical ways.

The listicle writer was also extremely positive about Quentin Tarantino's script, calling it "the purest, coolest, and most honest thing Tarantino has ever written." After Jackie Brown, which I think wins even just on those three specifics, I'm inclined to agree. True Romance is a beautiful underclass Elvis and Marilyn story about a girl from Tallahassee, Florida, and a comic book store clerk from Detroit whose faith in love carries the day. Already Tarantino's greatest strengths are on display, in the way the dialogue rolls, in the way the characters intermesh, and yes, in the way the violence explodes.

Elvis Presley, "Make the World Go Away" (1970)

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No part of Elvis Presley's career is a gray area (or every part is), but 1970 comes close. Still basking in the glow of his late-1968 comeback, before he had mostly slipped into rote biz again as he'd done a decade before, 1970 was the year Presley recorded one of his most singular albums, Elvis Country (I'm 10,000 Years Old), a concept work that attempts to embrace and weave together all country: bluegrass, honky tonk, rockabilly, countrypolitan, etc. No doubt "Make the World Go Away," which closes out the original album (since decked out in reissues with multiple additional tracks), is intended as the countrypolitan statement. A Hank Cochran song, it has been a hit twice—by Timi Yuro in 1963 and by Eddy Arnold in 1965, probably the best known version. It was also recorded by Ray Price (the first to do so, in 1963), the Osmonds, Roger Whittaker, Mickey Gilley, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, and many others. It would have to be the strings mainly that make it countrypolitan, but it's also the Presley vocal style of the period—compare "Suspicious Minds," "Kentucky Rain," "In the Ghetto." He sounds hoarse, tired, and depressed. I don't say that like it's a bad thing. It's not—it's highly effective. The sadness of all these songs is their chief virtue, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Presley, the consummate professional, were so playing deliberately to the dimming fatigue. "Get it off - get it off my shoulders," he whimpers in "Make the World Go Away," speaking for all of us I guess at one point or another. The sentiment is just right, the mood of the song suited exactly to the performance, as Presley simply lays claim to ownership of one more pop song others are known for.

Mojo Nixon, "Elvis Is Everywhere" (1987)

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A lot of things about what is likely Mojo Nixon's best known song have dated badly, not least the main thrust, the tired old literal deification of Elvis Presley, with its unpleasant echoes of the hobbyhorse mythmaking of the '80s. It's a novelty song, and sounding infinitely smaller a year or two past their era is a problem that novelty songs have. I knew someone who shared a place with Mojo Nixon for awhile and he said what you see (hear) is what you get, an entirely unfiltered guy who sat on the couch and played a guitar and held court, day and night, 24/7. Any time my pal came home, he'd find it again. Mojo Nixon. Carrying on. I've only seen him once, but yeah, it was pretty much this, raving around a lot of different songs, including this one, of course. I have always connected with the whole shtick somehow, it just makes me laugh. He's got a kind of Don Rickles/ Rodney Dangerfield type of energy that I love, the comic who throws everything he's got into it until you can feel the figurative veins throbbing in the brow. And in this way he gets laughs. Example: After he blows it (nowadays—it used to be one of the reliable laugh lines) with an unfortunate Michael J. Fox dig, this is where he goes: "And Elvis is in Joan Rivers but he's trying to get out, man. He's trying to get out! Listen up Joanie baby"—and into the chorus. I know it's risky to make this kind of assertion, but—that's funny! It's really funny! In the 25 years since this song came out Joan Rivers herself has made it better and better.

Odds, "Wendy Under the Stars" (1991)

(listen/NSFW)

The adolescence of this runs to strange depths, in more ways than one, a few a bit over-aged and vaguely unpleasant (warbling adenoidally about "an older woman's well-banked fire"). But I love the way it figuratively yodels, throws a lasso, and hauls in the king of rock 'n' roll, Elvis Presley, to appear in a supporting role as the specter of death playing opposite virgin sex. Something like that appealed to Greil Marcus, who went on about it in vintage fashion in Dead Elvis: "'Wendy Under the Stars' began circulating on homemade cassettes in 1990, and it offered a spirit no one had ever before caught even for a moment.... The tune was recorded on a Sunday, in a Christian Music studio that was closed to Christians on the Sabbath; a TV played in the background, up and down—you can hear 'The Star-Spangled Banner'.... [Elvis] enters the two bodies, guides them, seals the act with his presence—it's what he would have wanted—and the boy and the woman must rise to his promise. He's a succubus and an angel. The sense of betrayal one hears in the first punk songs about Elvis—the fury at him for not being who he said he was, the fury at his being, finally, so ordinary as to die—shifts now: it has taken thirteen years for the anger that powered so many good songs to change into the plainspoken awe of a better one." Well, I'm not sure the song really supports the weight of all that. But it is the presence of Elvis that makes it, and it's certainly a good deal more than simple coming of age.

Reconsider Baby (1954-1971)

It shouldn't be any surprise that my favorite albums by Elvis Presley are barely albums proper in the way we typically think of albums now. He just never was that much of an albums artist, too busy making himself a colossal force of culture. Or anyway making movies, or something. So if The Sun Sessions was cobbled together 20 years or more after the fact, and Elvis' Golden Records, Vol. 3 appears deceptively to be just another entry in the ongoing ossification of the '60s, this was conceived, assembled, and released in 1985, nearly a decade after his death. I don't think it ever got a real CD release and it's not particularly easy to reassemble its various pieces from the bewildering thickets of product existing out there now. Its stated purpose was to make the case for Presley as an accomplished blues singer; note the hues of the album cover, for emphasis. The track listing: "Reconsider Baby," "Hi-Heel Sneakers," "Stranger in My Own Home Town," "Down in the Alley," "Merry Christmas Baby," "Tomorrow Night," "So Glad You're Mine," "One Night," "When it Rains, it Really Pours," "My Baby Left Me," "Ain't That Loving You Baby," "I Feel So Bad." I haven't been able to reproduce this album since my turntable went bust and I let it slip away in various purges of vinyl, at least in terms of the versions I remember for each title, but with what's out there now one can still come close enough to affirm, positively, "Mission accomplished." Presley reportedly found his greatest comforts and pleasures singing gospel, he's adequate as a crooning balladeer (some would surely argue he's even better than that), and of course he's the widely acknowledged "king of rock 'n' roll." But he was no slouch when it came to the blues, whether it's flavors of raunch, rave-up, desperation, jumping joy, or just plain sadness. He was all over it. This is a set, though you may have to go to some trouble now to gather it up together in one place, that stands up to and actually gets better and better with extended regular play. Sometimes I feel like Presley is overrated, with all the hoopla and everything that is claimed for him. No one could live up to that. But when I listen to a set like this I realize how genuinely gifted he was. Multiply that across varying tastes by the millions and I think you start to get some idea where the reputation comes from. He's one of those rare figures who comes very close to managing to be all things to all people. And if you'll excuse me now, I really must go spend another six minutes with this amazing version of "Merry Christmas Baby" that's just starting....

65. Elvis Presley, "Blue Moon" (1954)

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Perhaps the first unfathomable mystery in rock 'n' roll was Elvis Presley's "Blue Moon," recorded in 1954 at Memphis's Sun studios, with Sam Phillips producing, and Scotty Moore and Bill Black providing support on guitar and bass. This unassuming little thing almost always requires a twist of the volume knob. It sneaks in like one late to the curtain, and then somehow becomes the show itself. Its clip-clop rhythm, its heavy echo on Presley's keening delivery, and its utter hush remain as strangely affecting as lifting one's head to the night sky and seeing UFOs: a confluence of imagination and technology at once transcendent, powerful, and elusive. Where does it come from? What does it want from us? As vinyl, memory etched as permanent artifact, it is ultimately more dependent on production than performance. But the performance is not without its points, as when Elvis glides out like some cartoon character swirling over the edge of a cliff, and floats there, buoyed by his own tremulous incoherent falsetto, unencumbered by everything but the sounds of vowels. Its strangeness has long invited interpretations related to death and the afterlife and other mysteries of the universe. It was never a hit of any kind, though it showed up here and there often enough: thrown onto Presley's first album along with other unreleased Sun material; then released as the A-side of a no-hit single in September 1956, a casual afterthought for RCA, busy by then spewing out Elvis product in every direction. It also appeared on an EP that year and, 20 years later, on the essential Sun Sessions album. All who have heard it remember it. Many think it a little weird.

"Suspicious Minds" (1969)

37. Elvis Presley, "Suspicious Minds" (Sept. 20, 1969, #1)

I know it could well be considered some kind of sacrilege to not only place the hallowed king of rock 'n' roll at such a relatively low level on a list like this, but then to complicate the matter further—adding insult to injury, like—by choosing this title to do it with. But I was born almost exactly too late for Elvis (and right on time for the Beatles) and never caught up with his great '50s work, the best of which did not chart anyway, until well after his death. Meanwhile, this song has worked its way far inside me, slow and steady, starting from that first autumn when it was on the radio. As I say, I was almost entirely ignorant about who he was and what he represented. I didn't understand this was part of a comeback that many considered almost miraculous. To me, it was just something I heard on the radio, shut up in my bedroom by myself working on puzzles and/or Ed Roth hot-rod models (which I wasn't particularly into either, I just wanted something to do while I played the radio, and liked the "Mad" magazine vibe). This song wasn't even a particular favorite, at least not consciously, but the worried tone of it worked on me, the simple but dexterous guitar playing, the strings sawing in on the big moments, the subdued and submerged tone of his vocal, as if he is singing from the bottom of a very deep place, and the overweening, aching sadness that it communicates. Over the years, I came to love this more and more, until finally, in 1981, I bought a copy of the 45 single and proceeded to wear it down to surface noise. I think I'm probably not explaining very well what is important to me about this song, but it's important.

Elvis' Golden Records, Vol. 3 (1963)

"(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame" Born too late (for something!), I missed all of Elvis pre-1960 entirely and this must stand as my favorite collection of Elvis Presley songs. Serious Elvologists Greil Marcus, Charlie Gillette, Peter Guralnick, Dave Marsh, etc., tend to deride it a little for "It's Now or Never" (usually characterized as "operatic" and indeed a big empty hollow thing, but not without its charms) and sometimes "Are You Lonesome Tonight," which I'll get down with. I mean, I understand the trouble that '50s followers have with the Elvis of the '60s. But the fruits of that achingly slow recession into ever-hardening amber goo happen to be among my earliest exposures to music coming from the radio: "I Gotta Know," "I Feel So Bad," "Good Luck Charm," "Stuck on You." To me, it's just wonderful pop music. "Little Sister" I never encountered until I picked up this album in the early '80s and that's worth the cost alone. So are the Jordanaires, every single darn time they show up too.

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The Sun Sessions (1954-1955)

"That's All Right" The most important album of Elvis Presley's career, not to mention arguably in rock 'n' roll history, is actually a pastiche of Sun singles and outtakes first put together in the mid-'70s. Since then, various takes have gone in and come out, the cover has changed once or twice or more, and it's been remastered nearly as often, following the whims of the times. But oh who cares? In the end, all definitions fade and are inadequate to the material here. Recorded before Elvis was even 21, backed by a couple of talented good ol' boys on guitar and bass, drawing on resources imported direct from the primal human experience, I can't imagine what these songs must have sounded like to the people who made regional hits of them in the mid-'50s U.S. South. It's fresh, it's catchy, sure, all of that, but it's always tempting to reiterate the claims about it that have become cliches: "big bang of rock 'n' roll," etc. But listen, these three guys and particularly the singer (with Sun's Sam Phillips at the board) go about their business with astonishing efficiency, neatly stitching together fragments of country and blues in a way no one quite had before, and somehow they changed everything.

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